Last week, U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., unveiled a report on the “high prices of diabetes drugs for seniors and the uninsured and the adverse impact on Florida’s Ninth District.”
Soto held a town hall on prescription drug prices in Haines City on Thursday where he released the report. The sophomore congressman noted that the report looked how at Medicare’s inability to negotiate drug prices impacts Central Florida with prices there considerably higher than in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.
"This is an absolutely critical issue, not just for our district and our state but for our entire nation,” Soto said on Thursday. “During our town hall this morning, I shared my family’s personal history of losing my older sister, Lauren, to leukemia at 3.5 years old. With today’s technological advances in medicine, prescription drugs for leukemia and other chronic diseases are able to save lives. Yet a growing number of American families cannot afford these medications. This is having a tremendously harsh impact on our community. Our seniors on Medicare and those uninsured are sadly the ones who suffer most from soaring medication prices. We’re taking action in Congress to ensure affordable access for people who need it most. We must reverse this trend now!”
Soto’s office showcased some of the findings in the report.
“The report found that: there are approximately 30,000 Medicare beneficiaries in Florida’s 9th Congressional District who have been diagnosed with diabetes; there are 120,000 uninsured residents in Florida’s 9th District who may bear the entire burden of their high prescription drug prices; in Florida’s 9th Congressional District, the 50 most popular brand-name diabetes medications cost the Medicare program and beneficiaries nearly $26 million in 2016;for seniors and other Medicare beneficiaries in the district, the cost of a widely-used insulin would be 72 percent lower at Australian prices, 71 percent lower at UK prices, and 53 percent lower at Canadian prices; more than 30 million people in the United States, including more than one in four seniors, have diabetes,” Soto’s office noted.
First elected to Congress in 2016 after serving in both chambers of the Florida Legislature, Soto represents a solidly Democratic district in Central Florida.
